Michael McKinnie is Professor of Theatre at Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses primarily on theatre’s relationship with political economy and its role in urban development, as well as on theatre as a social institution embedded in political and economic relations, and how this plays out offstage as much as onstage. Michael is the author of Theatre in Market Economies (2021) and City Stages: Theatre and Urban Space in a Global City (2007), which was awarded the Ann Saddlemyer Award by the Canadian Association for Theatre Research, and recently contributed chapters to The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945 (2024) and The Cambridge Guide to Mixed Methods Research for Theatre and Performance Studies (2024). Whilst his first book focused on the relationship between theatre and urban development in Toronto since the 1960s, he has written extensively about theatre in London, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States. 

He is also the editor of Space and the Geographies of Theatre. He studied Drama (BA) and English (MA) in Canada, and worked in Toronto in new play development before moving to the United States to complete his PhD in the Interdisciplinary Program in Theatre and Drama at Northwestern University, where he wrote his thesis under the supervision of Professor Tracy C. Davis. He joined Queen Mary in 2006, having previously worked at the University of Birmingham and Queen’s University Belfast.